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On Birth Control: A Plea to Republican Women

Date: April 12, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Uncategorized
Comments: 7 Replies
Français : Différents types de pilule contrace...

Français : Différents types de pilule contraceptive English: Different kinds of birth control pills. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to a recently widely publicized study, the vast majority of women use some type of artificial birth control.  For most women that birth control is hormonally based birth control.  Yet despite its wide-spread use Republican governors and representatives have been pushing legislation across this country that would make the most commonly used forms of birth control illegal or more difficult to obtain.

This is my plea to Republican women.  We may not agree on fiscal policy or the size of government.  We may not agree on states rights versus the role of the federal government.  We may not agree on unions or labor rights in this country.  We may not agree on the role of religious organizations in government. We may not have the same thoughts on foreign policy. We may not agree on gun control or funding for education.  We may not have the same views on the environment or sustainable energy.  We may not agree on how health care should be paid for and who should get it.  We may not agree on entitlement programs or how we should pay down the national deficit and debt.  We may have different feelings about corporate person-hood or regulation of the banking industry.  We may not agree on the our current tax system.  We may not share the same opinions on access to or the legality of abortion.

But nearly all of use birth control.  And we like using birth control because we think it is important to decide how many children we want to have, if any at all.  We like planning our families and spacing out our pregnancies.  We like being able to have a healthy sexual relationship with our spouses or partners and not risk getting pregnant every time we have sex.  We like being able to use birth control for therapeutic reasons such as heavy periods, Endometriosis or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.   We like to concentrate our families resources on the children we do have rather than spreading them out over so many.   We aren’t all religious extremists and most of us see nothing morally wrong with using birth control.  We don’t all look to someone like Michelle Duggar with her nineteen kids and a reality show and think she is living the dream.

So I implore you if you are a Republican woman and you want to keep birth control available for all women of child-bearing age including yourself, that you let your Republican representatives, senators and governors know you aren’t going to stand for this.  Women in the democratic party are also fighting back, but those politicians know we wouldn’t vote for them anyway.  As a republican you have more pull on this issue as those republican representatives really do need your vote.  We don’t have to agree on every issue, but we are all women and we are indeed all in this fight together.  No one can tell half of the adult population in a free society that they are going to limit our choices and get away with it.   The political system in a democracy does not exist without citizens standing up and screaming for what they believe in.  And we will not always agree, on a lot of topics, but we are all women.  And our right to access and use birth control is something so near and dear to our daily lives that no political party or political agenda should threaten.

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Birth Control Debate: Religious Freedom or Sexism?

Date: March 29, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Agnostic, Politics, Uncategorized, Women and Feminism
Comments: Leave a reply
U.S Postage Stamp, 1957

U.S Postage Stamp, 1957 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am completely floored by the current debate over the health care mandate requiring health insurance companies to pay for birth control and religious freedom. For starters no one is arguing that men receiving a prescription for the erectile dysfunction drug fill out any forms or prove that they are married or using the drug to procreate. Other than a few crafty legislatures who have introduced bills as a means to protest these insane attempts to limit access to birth control, no one has argued against viagra in terms of religious freedom.

And what about religious freedom? When did the right to worship as you please change to the right to influence or direct the personal behavior of your employees? Health insurance isn’t a hand-out paid for entirely by the employer and given to employees out of the goodness of their hearts. It is part of an employees compensation, so the employee is in effect earning their health insurance through their hard work. Most plans take a portion of the premium directly out of the employees paycheck. And the employer is allowed to deduct a certain amount paid for their employees premiums off of their tax liability, as health insurance is just another cost of doing business.  I also cry foul because so far there has been no mention of IVF fertility treatments.  The Catholic church is against IVF treatments because they create many embryos that ultimately get destroyed in the process of trying to create a pregnancy.  IVF treatments are not being mandated as part of basic health insurance coverage by the government but it is interesting how the pro-life movement rarely mentions them or brings up the topic.  We don’t see throngs of protestors outside fertility treatments for the great multitude of frozen embryos destroyed as a result of these fertility treatments.

So how far are we going to take religious freedom?  How much can an employer influence the lives of their employees in the name of religious freedom.

Would Muslim employers

  • Require female workers to wear a veil while at work, or even a Burka
  • Be allowed to discriminate against women and refuse to hire women based on their religious beliefs
  • Pay women less than men, based on their religious beliefs
  • Ban all pork and other prohibited foods under Islamic law in the workplace even for non-Muslim employees
  • Make non-Muslim employees observe Muslim holy days and traditions including fasting
  • Require moments of silence in the work place for all five times during the day that Muslims pray towards Mecca

Would Mormon Employers be allowed to

  • Ban Coffee from the work place
  • Institute modest dress code laws
  • Require mandatory readings of the Book of Mormon

Would Scientologist employers be allowed to

  • Refuse to cover any psychiatric or psychological drugs or care
  • Force employees to attend Scientologist meetings or treatment such as for alcoholism or learning disabilities
  • Demand every employee to be audited with an e-meter

Would an orthodox Jew employer be allowed to

  • Force female employees to wear wigs and forgo pants for long skirts and modest clothing.
  • Institute all Kosher laws regarding the Sabbath and food restrictions

Would a Jehovah’s Witness employer be allowed to

  • Refuse to cover many surgeries that would require a blood transfusion

Christian Scientist

  • Ban most medical procedures in favor of spiritual healing and prayer

Seventh Day Adventist

  • Require all employee to adhere to a strict vegetarian diet while at the work place

And could any religious employer refuse to cover the legal spouse of a same-sex marriage in the states in which same-sex unions and marriages are legal?  Most states mandate employers to cover their employees for some type of health care coverage depending on the amount of employees.  Could an especially frugal employer simply state that their religious beliefs would only support 100% faith healing and prayer, pretty much wiping away the need for health insurance entirely.  Why not?  If an employer gets to act as a parent to their employee and decide what is morally acceptable and what is not, what is to stop such an action.

The birth control debate is just another ridiculous attack against women.   And I don’t know when the employer’s right to freedom of religion supersedes the right of an employees right to privacy or their own religious freedom.  I thought religious freedom was the right to worship as you chose, not the right to dictate to others how they should or should not live their lives.

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Rush Limbaugh – Sluts, Prostitutes or just a pack of Lies?

Date: March 2, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Politics, Uncategorized
Comments: 4 Replies

OK so regular readers of this blog know that I have a very popular entry with the title

Dating After Divorce in a City of Sluts

That one article completely changed the course and direction of my life, got me international press and indirectly a literary agent.  When I used the term, I used it in a lighthearted attempt to describe the sexual behaviors of the entire city of NYC.  To quote myself.

I find frustrating is that if you really want to get to know a guy first before having sex with him, it seems like there is no end to the women who will jump into bed with them. And this isn’t to say that only men do this, as women engage in the same behavior as do people of all sexual orientations and gender identifications.

So although some have misinterpreted my use of the term slut, I do indeed refer to every adult male, female, gay, straight, bisexual and transgendered person indirectly as a slut.  Not to say that every adult in NYC engages in slutty behavior, but people from every sexual orientation and gender specification certainly do.  Why people felt obligated to associate the female gender to the term “slut” is beyond me, but I meant slut in terms of people who engage in promiscuous behavior.  Some men and women proudly identify as sluts so given the context, I really didn’t see what the fuss was about.  But now that we have my history with the term “slut” addressed I would like to move on to Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh decided to personally attack Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown University who testified before the congressional committee on the cost of birth control.  For sharing her personal story about the high cost of her birth control Rush labeled her both a slut and a prostitute.  I am not going to address the name calling or equating a woman using birth control as a prostitute because it is pointless to even bother.  But I am going to break down his arguments.

Hormonal birth control is prescribed to many woman for health related purposes that are not related to preventing pregnancy.  NO ONE in the press wants to address this.  Birth control pills are prescribed for many female reproductive health problems such as – ovarian cysts, heavy periods, irregular periods, painful periods, hormone imbalances, light or infrequent periods, early onset menopause even cystic acne.  In many cases, the pill is effective in most cases for reducing these symptoms, it is not exclusively taken to prevent pregnancy.

The cost of hormone based birth control when compared to condoms.  Rush and his staff “crunch the numbers to try to show that hormone based birth control pills are not cost-effective.  But comparing condoms to birth control is like comparing a raincoat to an umbrella.   According to AmericanPregnancy.com hormone based birth control pills have a 93-97%  success rate when used in real life conditions.  And according to the same site, condoms have a 14-15% failure rate.  So solely basing birth control on condom use would result in more unplanned pregnancies.  Also according to AmericanPregnancy.com the cost of delivering a baby could reach as high as $6000-8000 which does not include prenatal care or the extensive costs of a complicated pregnancy, especially one requiring a Caesarian section.

The Tax Payer is on the hook for birth control Rush also claimed that the “tax payer” is somehow paying for Sandra Fluke’s birth control but I don’t know where he is getting that other than thin air.  The subject being debated on congress had nothing to do with the federal government spending any tax dollars on anyone’s insurance.  If Rush would like to debate that topic he is free to do so, but this particular issue has to do with either the employer or the health insurance company paying for birth control, it says absolutely nothing about the government paying for anything.  It is designed to set national standards for essential healthcare benefits.  And using that logic, anyone in a health insurance plan is paying for another member’s care.  Pay $8,000 in yearly premiums, but use only $2000 worth of care?  Then you are paying directly into the profits of the health insurance company but also for another member’s heart surgery, cancer treatment or for a premature infant clinging to life in an incubator.   That is just how health insurance works, most people pay more into it than they get back and a few patients cost the plan more than they put in.  If it didn’t work this way the companies wouldn’t be able to turn a profit.

The women are having too much sex and that is why they need birth control – The way hormonal birth control works a woman has to take it for an entire month and stay on it for months whether she is having sex daily or once a year.  The amount of sex is irrelevant.

Married couples should not have hormonal birth control as an option for helping them control the size of their families? Rush doesn’t address this directly but the vast majority of women including Catholic women in the US use some form of birth control.  The Guttmacher Institute in a new report, Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use. The report showed that, “among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning”  Are married women who use birth control sluts in Rush’s world view? Most married women only have one sexual partner, not exactly a slut.

And of course his last ridiculous statement simply made to get press more than anything else. –

Since “WE” are paying for it, these women should video tape their sexual encounters.  According to the proposed legislation, the health insurance providers or the employers would be paying for the birth control, NOT the tax payer.  And even with that insane logic, then Rush might as well start producing some of his own tapes, after all a health insurance plan most likely helped pay for his Viagra.  So everyone paying a premium to the same insurance company better start demanding videos of his erections, just because they helped pay for them.

And if he is going to make personal attacks – Rush Limbaugh – married four times, yet has no children, three of his wives were of child baring age, so either he is sterile, or someone was using birth control.  No one knows this for sure, perhaps he successfully used the rhythm method for each wife and through some miracle no one got pregnant.  Rush who has had problems with abusing prescription drugs himself, was caught entering the country with the erectile dysfunction drug Viagara.   So is it acceptable for a health insurance company to pay for a drug that certainly would increase the sexual capacity for a man, but not for birth control for a woman?  That seems like ridiculous hypocrisy to me and most Americans would agree, in fact according to A Kaiser Family Foundation survey nearly 2/3 of American Adults favored Obama’s birth control policy.

Rush Limbaugh is a blow-hard who says crazy things to get attention and press.  He might have finally gone too far.  Attacking half of the adult population directly is not always the best method for winning over converts to his cause.  But we shouldn’t tell him that, let him alienate half the voting population.  Seems like a winning strategy to me!

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